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Environment, Health, Safety & Security

A ‘most wanted’ safety improvement

In the chemical process industries (CPI), dust can present an issue far more menacing than a housekeeping nuisance. Combustible dust is in fact, much too often listed as a cause of serious, and even fatal accidents.   Incidents In January…

Flare Consolidation Considerations

Consolidating multiple flares can help mitigate emissions and maintenance Chris Ng and Zubin Kumana Siemens, Process Safety Consulting Many petroleum-refining and petrochemical facilities have experienced tremendous growth in recent years in response to increasing demand for fuels and chemical precursors.…

Fire-Water Pumps for CPI Facilities

FIGURE 1  Fire-water pump assemblies are typically skid-mounted to ease installation and operation. Shown here is an example of a skid-mounted, diesel-engine-driven, fire-water pump package   Fire-water pumps are critical machines that save lives and prevent chemical process industries (CPI)…

Achieving Excellence in Energy Efficiency

In today’s environmentally conscious world, industrial energy management is increasingly recognized as an essential business practice and economic necessity, rather than an on-again, off-again activity driven by energy prices and geopolitical crises. In this article, we examine the key elements…

Profitable potential for trash-to-liquids process

A group at Texas A&M University (College Station, Tex.; www.tamu.edu) is developing a process that converts organic municipal solid waste (MSW) into straight-chain alkanes, a primary component in gasoline. The four-step process (diagram) begins with a proven industrial waste-sorting method…

Partnership targets bio-based building blocks from CO2

AkzoNobel N.V. (www.akzonobel.com) has partnered with Dutch start-up company Photanol (both Amsterdam, the Netherlands; www.photanol.com) to manufacture specialty chemicals using a photosynthesis-like process that combines sugar production with fermentation in a single organism. Photanol has developed genetically engineered cyanobacteria that…

Large-scale CCS

Last month, the first commercial-scale, post-combustion carbon capture and storage (CCS) plant started up in Saskatchewan, Canada. The SaskPower facility at the Boundary Dam Power Station is expected to capture around 1 million m.t./yr of CO2, which is up to…

Don’t Let Your Disaster Plan Collect Dust

According to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA; Washington, D.C.) there were 95 Federal disaster declarations in the year 2013 in the U.S. The state-by-state disaster statistics show even higher numbers of events, emergencies and disasters in 2013 for many…

Combine wastewater treatment with biofuel production

Algae Systems LLC (Daphne, Ala.; www.algaesystems.com) has inaugurated a demonstration plant that integrates municipal wastewater treatment with the cultivation of biofuel-producing algae. Pretreated and disinfected municipal wastewater is passed to Algae Systems offshore floating-bag photobioreactors (PBRs), which are located in…

An energy-saving bioreactor for wastewater treatment

A bioreactor technology for removing organic and inorganic contaminants from industrial wastewater has been commercially launched by developer Honeywell and its subsidiary UOP LLC (Des Plaines, Ill.; www.uop.com). The launch is part of a wider initiative by UOP to respond…